Social Media Manager Job Description: A Complete Guide

“Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he’s hired to do.” ~Malcolm Forbes

Many businesses have recognized the awesome value and benefit in Social Media marketing. Perhaps you’re one of those. You’ve seen how Social marketing drives leads and sales and boosts your online reputation. However, as a business owner, you aren’t spending time on Social networks personally and it’s quite a challenge to figure out who the best person is to handle your business’ online presence or what that person’s job duties should be.

While Social marketing and social advertising are an integral part of your strategy, at its heart, Social Media is about people, conversations and capturing leads and sales from those relationships. In a previous post here I wrote about the questions to ask a potential hire. Once you’ve hired your savvy candidate, you’ll need a Social Media manager job description to track progress, hold them accountable and know exactly where your budget is going for Social Media marketing and advertising.

Here’s a comprehensive guide to help determine where your Social Media manager is succeeding and where you need to place more attention:

Social Media Manager Job Description

The Social Media Manager will implement the company’s Social Media marketing. Administration includes content strategy, develop brand awareness, generate inbound traffic and cultivate leads and sales. The Social Media manager is a highly motivated individual with experience and a passion for designing and implementing the Company’s content strategy, creating relevant content, blogging, community participation and leadership. This position is full time salaried with benefits, including attendance at Social Media, blogging and industry-specific conferences.

Responsibilities

The following seven Social Media marketing components are the roadmap to success and are the responsibilities of the Social Media manager. Your Social Media manager must master them to execute Social campaigns effectively:

1. Clear Objectives

Set realistic goals. It isn’t enough to say you “see” results, they must tie back to your objectives. You’ll never know Social Media ROI without first setting objectives. For example, at Kruse Control, we use five objectives for Facebook marketing:

Growth of Likes

Reach

Engagement

Leads

Sales

2. Great Design

Visual content has a lasting effect on us humans. Whether it’s your status updates, your landing pages or your Facebook ads, what the audience sees is what they’ll remember. Make sure it’s consistent, compelling and gets your point across.

3. Solid Content Strategy

What you post on your Social channels is the foundation for all your other Social Media marketing. The Social Media manager must perform a “Brand Discovery”, which outlines what it is about your business that makes it unique. This includes your core values and beliefs, and the reasons people want to buy from YOU. The answers should be in-depth and detailed.

The second part of your “Brand Discovery” describes your ideal customers. What are their interests, what problems can you solve, where do they spend their time, and how can you help them? Quality information that’s relevant to your ideal customers attracts them and sets your Social marketing up for the next steps.

4. Promotion Strategy

You need to continually grow your fan base. Social advertising is a very valuable tool to get your message heard. However, Social ads don’t look like the ads you’re used to seeing. They differ in content, placement and targeting. The best way to grow your Facebook page is to utilize Facebook Ads. A small budget with carefully selected photos and ad copy (with a clear call-to-action) will increase likes and foster engagement.

5. Engagement Strategy

Your Social Media manager should listen, respond, ask questions and engage with your audience. There should be careful consideration on how he/she responds to organic (non-paid) leads. People will ask questions and the Social Media manager should have knowledge and/or experience of the sales process to respond correctly. If a lead asks a question, answer it and follow it with a question back to them.

6. Conversion Strategy

With growth and engagement strategies in place, the Social Media manager’s job is to convert fans/followers into customers. The more advanced form of Facebook marketing utilizes Facebook ads and optimized landing pages to capture leads and convert them into sales. I’ve found most dealerships and other businesses need advice and support with conversion strategy. Find the right person to advise you so you get where you want to go faster, more cost-effectively and achieve the best results.

7. Measure & Analyze to establish ROI

Measure results on a weekly basis. As mentioned earlier, your results must tie back to your objectives. Factor in your time, effort and budget to determine if your efforts succeeded.

Analyze campaigns and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations and plans for revising the Social Media campaigns.

Monitor effective benchmarks (best practices) for measuring the impact of Social Media campaigns. Analyze, review, and report on effectiveness of campaigns in an effort to maximize results.

Qualifications and Experience

Possesses knowledge and experience in the tenets of traditional marketing. Marketing degree is welcomed but not required with relevant work experience.

Demonstrates creativity and documented immersion in Social Media. (Give links to profiles as examples).

Proficient in content marketing theory and application. Experience sourcing and managing content development and publishing.

Exhibits the ability to jump from the creative side of marketing to analytical side, able to demonstrate why their ideas are analytically sound.

Displays in-depth knowledge and understanding of Social Media platforms, their respective participants (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Google+Local, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest etc.) and how each platform can be deployed in different scenarios.

Maintains excellent writing and language skills.

Enjoys a working knowledge of the blogging ecosystem relevant to the Company’s field.

Displays ability to effectively communicate information and ideas in written and video format.

Exceeds at building and maintaining sales relationships, online and off.

Is a Team player with the confidence to take the lead and guide other employees when necessary. (ie: content development, creation and editing of content, and online reputation management).

Makes evident good technical understanding and can pick up new tools quickly.

Maintains a working knowledge of principles of SEO including keyword research. Highly knowledgeable in the principles of “Search and Social”.

It’s important to mention that qualified, savvy Social Media managers do not grow on trees. They’re the voice of your company and should be included in all matters which are customer-facing. With most every business needing to develop their online presence in order to participate in the consumer buying process, it’s in your best interests to hire the best and track their progress. Your online reputation and future sales depend on it!

Editor’s note: This post was originally published May 28, 2013 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Kathi Kruse is an Social Media Marketing Expert, Consultant, Blogger, Speaker, Author and Founder of Kruse Control Inc. Born in the heart of Los Angeles to a family of “car people”, Kathi’s passion for the car business spans a 30-year career managing successful dealerships in Southern California. Kathi is the author of “Automotive Social Business – How to Captivate Your Customers, Sell More Cars & Be Generally Remarkable on Social Media”. Her Kruse Control Blog is the leading Automotive Social Media blog in the US.

Excellent info. The qualities you mention are all definitely prerequisites for a SMM. They need a finger on the pulse of whatever media format chosen to build the business/customer relationship. As I am an independent owner of a parttime energy business, I have to balance these skills with the actual physical relationships of my business. Thanks.

krusecontrol

Thank you – I agree there is a challenge in balancing online and offline skills. It is “networking” after all (combined with customer service, PR and advertising too!). I think small business owners have an added layer of difficulty simply because of time constraints and there is only so much manpower to go around.

Christopher Laught

A defensive marketing strategy would be handy to address problems that commonly occur with other buinesses self promoting themselves on feeds, forums, tags, likes and shares (other then traditional moderating)

krusecontrol

That’s a great addition, Christopher. There is so much spam out there and it’s definitely something a Social Media manager would need to address. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Sharon Gilmour-Glover

Hi Kathi,

Thanks so much for this. I appreciate that you’ve combined education with specific, actionable content.

Also, between this post and Mark Harai’s post today, a penny dropped for me. I am now much clearer about who I’m blogging for at both of our blogs.

Cheers,
Sharon

krusecontrol

HI Sharon! I LOVE that you got clarity today from something I wrote. That’s why I do what I do. I love to have a link to Mark’s post today, if you get a chance. Thanks for your feedback. Cheers to you!

road.rep

This is great stuff, but how do you convince a single point or single campus dealer to hire a social media manager. Many of them won’t even adequately staff a BDC. What would you suggest as a pay plan and time requirement for this position? I support everything you say. I’m just not sure how to get it installed and working. Are there any examples, or metrics, or benchmarks for this kind of thing?

krusecontrol

Thanks for your reply. You bring up a lot of concepts that are entrenched in dealer culture. I would first say that a single point (or any large group) must re-allocate advertising expense over to personnel to cover the Social Media manager’s compensation. Social Media is a marketing medium and as such, requires skill, budget, and training to succeed. We used to write checks to advertisers and now we need to do some of it ourselves. Outsourcing diminishes results. If the dealer has no commitment at the start, there will be no success (like all things). If you’d like to email me, we can discuss your particular situation since it’s really hard to know where your challenges are.

Guest

I am the marketing manager for four dealerships, and I also handle social media. Besides handling marketing, advertising, online, promotions,etc I also am technically the SMM. Is it better to have someone dedicated to strictly sm? I find there is not enough time in the day and although schedulers help, I am always struggling to find enough time to do research, build strategies and make effective plans for the group since we have four different dealerships with different audiences, demo’s and targets. Look forward to your insight, thanks Kathi

krusecontrol

Hi there! It would be ideal to have someone focusing strictly on content strategy and marketing. Especially with 4 stores, like you say, and the different audiences. When you add in Facebook ads management, it’s a lot. If you had someone dedicated to content, who was trained in content marketing, then your results on Social Media, your blog or your newsletter would be much more effective. I feel you would achieve success much quicker. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

What are the high school and schooling requirements? I’m thinking of this as a future career as I’m very interested in social media, website operations and development. Do you have to have math as an important subject? And is university the only option for schooling or would a school like the centre for arts and technology in Nova Scotia be a option? Thank you.

krusecontrol

Hi Taylor, thanks for stopping by my blog. I think it’s best that you consult a career guidance counselor for answers to your questions. I would say for sure you should study marketing because that’s what this is. Marketing is marketing, no matter what platform you choose.

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http://adamevans.ca/ Francisca

Very nice post. I’m beginner in social media marketing field but have a craze to know many things about it. I think this post can make my begging level more better. Thanks!

AT

Thank you! This was an amazing post filled with specific and detailed information concerning who a social media manager is and the duties associated. I freelance as a social media manager and would consider myself skilled in content curation and strategy implementation, however I would love to know of some resources and/or tools to assist with my ROI and analytics reporting. Any suggestions???

http://www.krusecontrolinc.com krusecontrol

Hi there, thanks for your comment We use Rival IQ and Sprout Social. Each component of marketing has specific strategy and goals. ROI is all about setting goals so you can tie your results back to those goals.

saracsit

Great description. I’m currently charged with “write your own recommendation” from my previous employer and this will be extremely helpful to me. Thank you!

http://www.krusecontrolinc.com krusecontrol

Thank you for your feedback! I’m glad it helped you.

http://adamevans.ca/ Lawson Geis

Your article contains very helpful guidelines for fresh managers these 7 components will help them to achieve success in social media management..

http://www.krusecontrolinc.com krusecontrol

Thanks Lawson! I’m glad it’s helping you.

http://www.behance.net/EpaVision EpaVision

I work construction full time and found myself at the local pub after work on facebook or some social media.. so I said to myself… self how can you get them to pay me to sit here and post on line.. I knew the owners of two local pubs and saw that they were slacking in posting the daily specials and upcoming events… so I asked if they would let me take over your facebook and other accounts sp the owners could get down to running the business and I’ll hook you up.. I get paid every month from both pub’s and I even got my day job to pay me an additional fee every month for taking over their facebook. I have always played with computer since I got my commodore 64 way back but as for any real training no and I am sure I could do better and I strive to come up with fresh ads and content daily but one day I would love to do this full time. I figure I just need 15 to 20 bars to have me as social media manager and I can spend my days at the bar with my ear to the ground and my nights making content. thanks for the the great read. you can check out some of my work and I look forward to any and all in-put positive or negative. I am sure I could do more with the hash tags and SEO but I tell you just being a local and keeping up on events I have grown both pubs… now the paving company is an all together different animal.. there my goal is more to have content available and interesting and tag my co- workers and let it spread out not everybody wants to see dump trucks and hot black top in their news feed but I have seen improved traffic in the page also…ok ok I could go on and on.. thanks again and happy holidays.

Camron Bickford

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